The Next Generation Library Catalog: A Comparative Study of the OPACs of Koha, Evergreen, and Voyager

Sharon Q. Yang, Melissa A. Hofmann

Abstract

Open source has been the center of attention in the library world for the past several years. Koha and Evergreen are the two major open-source integrated library systems (ILSs), and they continue to grow in maturity and popularity. The question remains as to how much we have achieved in open-source development toward the next-generation catalog compared to commercial systems. Little has been written in the library literature to answer this question. This paper intends to answer this question by comparing the next-generation features of the OPACs of two open-source ILSs (Koha and Evergreen) and one proprietary ILS (Voyager’s WebVoyage).